The predictions for 2011 are clear: corporate social business will grow!
Deployment and use of social media are the basis of the model Enterprise 2.0, which also was the subject of many publications some of which were relayed on this blog. The implementation is quite complicated and many issues are still pending.
At the same time, the world of information management stirs around very legitimate issues of protection and recovery of information assets: Records manager, repository administrators, architects, lawyers and Risk managers, among others, seeking the best solution in response to their needs.
No quick fix
Suppliers do not provide quick fix and if certain standards (CMIS, Dublin Core, etc..) are emerging in support to interoperability between repositories, it is clear that we are still far from cross-cutting solutions operational.
Based on this observation and watching more closely some vendors' approaches, including the promising concept of case management, it is probably more relevant to consider that we need to change the solutions used to leverage the information assets in our business rather than attempting to apply to our existing patterns some existing, complex and uncertain procedures (in terms of results).
Business is very often based on a siloed organization and everything to everyone can easily realize this by counting the number of competing solutions (particularly with regard to archiving and content management) in production in the same company.
It is likely that the vertical organisation will persist and there is currently no solution for managing information assets which can pretend to avoid it for the only reason that if they allow interoperability in retrieving of content, no one opens the possibility to third-party solution to apply its own rules in terms of retention (capture, indexing, life cycle, deletion).
Corporate social media to overcome the "silos"
There is a large debate about social media and use of emails.
I think that email use is declining for some reasons well known: lack of security, lack of contextualization, bad manners of users, lack of control (spamming) and I am convinced that the corporate social media is a relevant alternative for a professional and efficient business communication!
Business social media and collaborative solutions are designed for contextualization of actions and content (structured and unstructured) around the projects with automation of some processes.
It also represents from the point of view of information governance, and more generally of information management, a solution fully under control!
The Paradox of Enterprise 2.0 is to try to eliminate (or reduce) vertical barriers but also to ensure the safety, security and therefore confidence about the content exchanged, which in most cases, could lead to a return of centralization in IT production (hybrid mode).
For IT people, it is likely that centralized solutions, even if they are implemented at the departmental level forums represent a net advantage in terms of control (eDiscovery) and information security.
It should also mention the potential savings due to lower duplication of content and thus the control of the volume of data and information stored.
For lawyers and legal counsels, corporate social media provides relevant answers
in terms of:
-
traceability
-
control of content and actions .
Corporate social media also allow better identification and risk prevention through the implementation of policies at a central level.
For business people, corporate social media should help to increase their effectiveness by using consistent application, intuitive and usable, modern (multi devices support), and especially available from a single access point!
Corporate social media is not intended to replace all existing business applications, but it must achieve the federation of daily business and content around the projects, within the organization's ecosystem, and far beyond vertical applications.
Symbol of the model Enterprise 2.0, corporate social media could also find a source of legitimation thus accelerated its deployment within the organizations by supporting actively the Information Governance strategy!
#socialcontentgovernance #socialmedia #informationmanagement #AIIM #ElectronicRecordsManagement #ECMe20contentmanagement